Rap music began during the early 1970s in The Bronx, New York City. Two stars of this early hip-hop era were DJ Kool Herc and DJ Hollywood. DJ Kool Herc’s parties are credited with being the birthplace of rap. During these parties, DJ Kool Herc would play a new style of fast-paced and upbeat music that soon gained popularity. Soon after, DJ Hollywood became the first artist to sing rhymes on top of these faster-paced tracks. This style of singing was later coined as the quintessential “rap” style. Later on, artists like Tupac Shakur, Eminem, and Jay-Z further contributed to the rap genre’s boom in popularity. People continued to fall in love with the bass-heavy and rhythmic beats associated with rap music.

Another essential aspect of the rap genre is the quick and punchy lyrics. Eminem and Busta Rymes are two artists that are most often associated with this aspect of rap. Many other artists wanted to recreate this style, but a majority were objectively unsuccessful. Artists who began to try and speak too quickly started meshing words together, causing their lyrics to be virtually unrecognizable to some. This new lyrical style gave way to the age of “mumble rap.” In “mumble rap” projects, the song is much more about flow and the beat rather than the actual words being sung.

This shift in the genre’s style was met with both support and backlash. Many rap fans believed this style to be downplaying the talents of artists who actually were able to make sensible lyrics while maintaining a fast-paced speech. Others believed that the new style was innovative and overall a good thing for all of music.

“I personally think that mumble rap is overall bad for the genre,” Andrew Wolfe (11) said. “It makes people think that rap is bogus and that nobody in rap can actually sing.”

This initial disagreement ultimately led to the question “Is rap dying?” Before being able to answer this question, one must decide exactly what “dying” means to them. If rap is seen as a culture, then the answer might be “yes.” However, if rap is seen as a style of music then one might answer “no” instead. It goes without question that the rap genre has been further commercialized in recent years.

With the creation of apps such as TikTok, artists have specifically engineered their music to make it more likely to go viral on these other platforms. The success of a song nowadays can be measured by how many teenage girls lip-sync to your music rather than how many streams or purchases it gets. Again, there are different perspectives on whether this change in success measurement is good or bad for the music as a whole. For some, this is only a minor adaptation to more modern times, but for others, this change is seen as defamation of the genre.

Overall, the rap genre is receiving more and more streams as the years go by, but the original roots of the genre are being left in the past. The music itself is going from bass-heavy party jams to a full-blown business, but whether this is classified as “dying” is up to the individual.